HISTORY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 23 



which they afforded to the royal cells, when assailed 

 by the first hatched queen. 



That the working bees are females is clear from 

 the circumstance of their being known occasionally 

 to lay eggs. This fact was first noticed by Riem, 

 and was afterwards confirmed by the experiments 

 of Huber, whose assistant, on one occasion seized 

 a fertile worker in the very act of laying. It is a 

 remarkable fact that these fertile workers never lay 

 any but drones' eggs. This uninterrupted laying 

 of drones' eggs was noticed by the Lusatian ob- 

 servers, as well as by the naturalist of the Pala- 

 tinate. Bonnet, on referring to this fact, supposes 

 there must have been small queens mixed with the 

 workers upon which the experiments were made, 

 whose office it was to lay male eggs in all hives ; 

 for neither he nor the before-named observers 

 imagined that the workers were ever fertile, though 

 from the oft repeated experiments, just alluded to, 

 they must have regarded them as females. Pro- 

 bably the fertility of these workers is occasioned 

 by some royal jelly being casually dropped into 

 their cells, when grubs, as they uniformly issue 

 from cells adjoining those inhabited by grubs, that 

 have been raised from the plebeian to the royal 

 rank ; of course therefore they are never found in 

 any hives but those which have had the misfortune 

 to lose their queen. Fertile workers appear 

 smaller in the belly and more slender in the body 



